November 15, 2011

I love 3D paper things. Love. And when I saw a little picture of what appeared to be paper balls in a CB2 catalog, I thought, "I am going to make those."

So the other day while Alex was writing a paper about mysterious things like polymers and flexible films and tactoids, I made a paper ball. Then I proudly announced I had created a tactoid and it was sitting on my desk. He giggled. Apparently a tactoid is not a paper ball.

These are made from 12 slotted flower shapes that fit together to form a sphere. No adhesive needed; the only ingredient is paper. I made a template in Illustrator and cut out the shapes with my Silhouette machine, but you could also print out the pages and cut by hand instead.

Download a Silhouette .studio file here:Small ball (3")– unzip the file; cut 1 sheet. (The shapes can be scaled up or down in Silhouette Studio if you'd like to change the size.)

If you want to hang your ornament, you might like to add the string before assembling the ball. I placed a piece of tape on the back of one flower so the hole wouldn't tear, then used a needle to pull string through, forming a loop on the front side. I secured the ends of the string on the back side with another piece of tape.

Use the slits to join petals together. Keep adding shapes, connecting as you go, so that every petal is connected to another petal on a neighboring flower.

It might be helpful to think of the first piece as the "north pole," and then add a row of five flowers encircling it. At this point, the ball is half finished.

Here's what it looks like upside-down:

Attach the next row of five flower shapes, and finally, add the "south pole" piece to finish the globe.

The colored balls are made from regular-weight computer paper (Astrobright from Office Max) and the white balls are made with cardstock. The big sphere is the size of a basketball; the little one is approximately a baseball. And the medium-sized guy is maybe a large grapefruit.

Kala, I'll try to explain again, but the photos are probably the most helpful.-Cut out 12 of the flower shapes.-Pick up one in each hand.-Put the slit in one petal into the slit in the other petal and slide them together until they don't go any further.-Pick up another flower shape and slip it into a petal on one of the first two flowers. -Then hook it to its neighbor at the point where two petals come together (see third photo in the post.) -Keep hooking on more pieces until you have a ball. It will take 12 pieces total. As you get closer to finishing it, you'll see how the petals will want to fit together naturally.

I just adore 3d paper crafts, I totally will have to make at least one -I might try some patterns or add photos. It reminds me of expensive contemporary pendant lamps.Also make some to hang around the house!

Sara, I would if I could, but as of several months ago when I tried to figure this out, there was no way to make a .studio file from a PDF. I cut these directly from Adobe Illustrator using a plug-in, instead of launching Silhouette Studio.

But I wonder what happens if you launch Silhouette Studio and do file>open>choose one of the PDFs. It will show up on the cutting mat area. Is there a way to make it cut, I wonder?

Or if anybody knows of a way to convert a .pdf to a .studio (on a mac), let me know!

I have ordered a Silhouette for myself (Christmas present). This is another example of WHY exactly I need this handy little machine. What a great project! What about using fabric (hint) with fusible interfacing and then cut that out and assemble....

Hehe, i just found that you cannot just say, "hey i don't need the template, i can do this myself" and go draw the flowers. Even if you measure angles out, there's always some little off detail that makes the petals not fit :(

thanks so much for doing the work for us on this one....saw those too and thought, oh I should make some! There is actually someone from Israel who makes them from vinyl and sells the kits on Etsy, though I wasn't sure how they were put together. all the best!

The first attempt was a lot of trial and error, but it all came together in the end. Thanks for creating the template (btw: the medium template printed with the black line but with pink on the inside; so I have a blush-color ball).

I have a silhouette on a mac. I'm very new to using it. I open your download file and tried printing it on my silhouette studio. All it cuts is one line at the bottom of page. I cannot figure out how to turn the black lines into cutting lines. Please help.I love the blog and all the cool projects

These are gorgeous! I tried the rounded ones then made them into stars and it worked great. The negative space you get also makes a star. I printed them with Christmas words in them and made the points a different color in Illustrator. Love it! Thanks for sharing.

Hmm, well, now I know the answer to my question in the comments above in response to Sara who asked me to post .studio files. I said:

"Sara, I would if I could, but as of several months ago when I tried to figure this out, there was no way to make a .studio file from a PDF. I cut these directly from Adobe Illustrator using a plug-in, instead of launching Silhouette Studio.

But I wonder what happens if you launch Silhouette Studio and do file>open>choose one of the PDFs. It will show up on the cutting mat area. Is there a way to make it cut, I wonder?

Or if anybody knows of a way to convert a .pdf to a .studio (on a mac), let me know!"

Well, now we know. Cutting from the PDF doesn't work. Sorry about that! I'd make you .studio file if it was possible!

I opened the PDF in PhotoShop Elements and saved it as a .PNG. I dragged and dropped that into Silhouette Studio, and did a trace of one of the flowers, then used the "fill page" command which gave me 12 perfect flowers, evenly spaced. I save that as my .studio file.

I made two more. One in metallic cooperish/goldish in medium size and an other small in light turquoise as the fist medium (my living room colors along with the black and white). The metallic one looks like a sculpture, very nice.FFYI, the smaller the ball, harder it is to put together. Also thicker the paper, easier. It seems to be obvious but better to be told also.Thank you again Jessica for sharing.

Wow! That is so cool! I just used your pattern to cut 12 of the shapes out of regular white computer paper. It took a bit of time to do all the cutting, but once the pieces were ready, they went together really fast & easy. Thanks for sharing!

Sonia is right! why did you have to make it so leftie-accessible? jk! but really, do you have a version of the small ball template with the slots going the other way? it would be sooo much easier to cut(my printer doesn't have the setting that will flip it)also you are awesome, Jessica!-Jenn-

Love these, thank you :) Have just made one from ordinary printer paper. To save cutting out twelve individual ones I just folded the paper over and lined up the outline markings so that I could cut out two at a time.

Now of course, I'm really coveting one of those Silhouette machines, which I had never even heard of before, still I am in the UK so not surprising :)

dreeI CAN'T STOP MAKING THESE. Plain white ones; mixed paper ones with white. I bought some scrapbooking papers on sale & am in heaven! I love the play of shadows on them. They make a beautiful sculptural display on a glass cake pedestal setting on a purple table cloth. These make beautiful little gifts for friends! THANKS.

Thank you! I will be blogging this one. It was so easy to print out the pages and use my sharp scissors to cut them out. Figuring out how to put them together took a little brain power but I love it! I used medium thickness cardstock and it went together fine. I think plain paper would be easy to do but also be easy to rip.

Just found your site from a post on Pinterest -- this craft reminds me of something we did when I was a kid (and had been wanting to do again) We used old Christmas cards and cut circles out of the Pictures and just folded the sides in to make triangles and glued (or you could tape/staple)the sides together until you got a ball of whatever size desired - then it became an ornament - just add string to hang it with. Thanks for giving my old "thinker" a kick!!! I'm going to dig out my old cards and the ones that come from businesses and get to work!! Thanks again! Craft Addict 2

I am definitely trying these on my Silhouette! Thanks for sharing the file too. I wanted to let you know that I've included this in our roundup of Christmas ornaments on the FaveCrafts Blog: http://www.favecraftsblog.com/link-love-ornament-explosion/

Hi there, thanks for putting these online. My mum found them via Pinterest and made me one for my birthday, today. I love it. I've even made one myself and written about it in my blog. You are very clever to have designed them. How many colours would I have to use so as not to have adjacent colours the same? Do you know?

oh my goodness, there are hundreds of comments! I'm clearly missing something here, so best I sort it out and 'follow'. I must go back to some of the comments to see if anyone has a link to how to make these into lamps - I'm really intrigued.Thanks heaps for not letting Alex deter you :-)

Okay, I consider myself an above average crafter and my husb. is THE puzzle solver in the family. But both of us are having a devil of a time making these look like yours. We're using red and black to go with a ladybug theme.I noticed that one comment mentioned a step-by-step photo tutorial. . .am I missing something?

Thanks so so so much for posting this tutorial. I made a few back in November and have since decided to use them as the main decor in the Lodge at our wedding. We'll be making a few large lamps (already gifted to friends at Christmas) and stringing small white ones together with LEDs inside them. I can't wait! I'll send you a thank you email with pictures. Cheers!

Thanks so much Jessica. made a small one about a month ago, then couldn't find it back @ pinterest. so googled it this morning. Have now saved the templates for future reference. Simple but so elegsant! thanks again.

Oh my goodness these are awesome! I just came across this idea on pinterest this morning. I'm going to be using it for my daughters birthday decorations to hang above the table. I was going to use the round paper lanterns, but now I'm going to use this instead! I resized mine on the Silhouette so that each flower was about 7.5" across. I only wish that I had a Cameo so I could make an even bigger one :)

I made a lamp out of the largest ball, it turned out great so I made a tutorial, here it is if you want to see it! http://frokens.se/?p=543. There is also instructions in english if you scroll down a bit!

ok so im going to try this on a thin plastic and make string lanterns for my porch gazebo. so hope it works because it would be cool and elegant yet simple and cheap. been looking for the string lanterns for so long now and if i find them they are so expensive. I'm so doing this :) thanks for your tutorial.

Jessica,I posted a while ago that I was going to make lanterns and LED filled balls for my wedding. We finally posted photos! http://chrisandbetsysalzman.com/p430908294/h4360a9f2#h4360ebc2http://chrisandbetsysalzman.com/p430908294/h43713ba6#h43713ba6Thanks again for your wonderful, inspiring blog!

Used my Cricut to cut the shapes from double sided scrapbook paper.Wonderful results! I use fishing line for hanging loops. Making some for our close relatives who lost all their ornaments in the Sept.2011 flood in NY state. Know they will love them. Thanks for sharing! imalefty

I have added the pendants and paper ball ornament photos to our class blog. I have also put in a link to your website. Thank you so much for sharing. The students are going to be very excited tomorrow morning.

Thanks for a nice decoration. Though I cant figure out how to put on the last pice. Seems like there are too many tabs left on the ball to be finished with only the last "pole" could you give a more detailed description on how to do it? preferably with a picture.

I've been painting a new house, and have collected what seems like every paint swatch from every paint store around. I knew there was something crafty out there to do with them; just used them to make the little paper ball. Looks great! Thanks!

I've been in love with these for a while! Been meaning to share with my readers. Your tutorials are so great, and I love that you love paper!! One of my favorite materials.... thanks for sharing! Featured this on my blog today and am sending my readers your way for the full tutorial :D Have a good one! http://ninered.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-diy-3-d-paper-ball.html

Jessica Thank you sooo much for the pattern, a lovely idea, very well thought out and beautiful.Idon't have the machine (Parsifal) to cut them out, so I do it by hand.But since I am in love with Zentagles, I printed one of your patterns, draw a nice Zentangle on it and then scanned it to print 12 identical pieces to make the paper ball (now standing pround on my desck).Thank you!Antonio (from Madrid, Spain)

These are lovely! I'm a maths teacher and have created a lesson on surface area, using the 3D paper balls as the prompt. Would you mind if I shared the resource with other teachers on the TES website? I will credit you of course.